A case study on literacy environment of culturally and linguistically diverse elementary students with reading underachievement in Korea

Submitted by: Eun Ju Lee
Abstract: This study aims to analyze the reading literacy environment factors of CLD students and to provide educational advices for schools, parents and community to stimulate students’ literacy learning.
Cambourne(1995) showed when seven good conditions of literacy learning is provided, students can do well on literacy learning. Quiroz, Snow, and Zhao(2010) figured out even immigrant parents who have low SES(Socioeconomic status) and bad pronunciations can stimulate children’s language development when they participate in literacy activities with their children well. These all emphasize the importance of literacy environment. Research on students from multi-cultural families usually focused on checking language abilities and finding the reasons such as parents’ SES and age. However, not many research has conducted which focuses on literacy environment factors of the students who has multi-cultural backgrounds in Korea.
According to the National Center for Multi-cultural Education in Korea, last 5 years, the amount of CLD students are over 20% of the whole students. Even students have multi-cultural backgrounds, they usually achieve like others in schools when they have lived in Korea a period of time. Some of them, however, still remain as underachievers and suffer from learning in schools due to their difficulties on reading caused by their poor literacy environment.
Subjects are divided into two groups based on their Korean language usage status; two Chinese-background(raised in China) immigrant students who use Korean as a second language and two students from international marriage families who were born and raised in Korea using Korean as a primary language. All of them can do basic communication in Korean with peers and teachers but they have difficulty in studying in normal classes.
We studied multidirectional case research giving paper interviews and face-to-face interviews with the teachers, students and parents to analyze the literacy environment. We researched school environment, out of school environment, family environment and students’ individual traits. Each environment factors are mainly divided into cognitive and non-cognitive.
This study shows that more delicate educational treatment is need for CLD students by checking their various environments. Furthermore, education for non-Korean fosterers adjusting in Korea should include children literacy education.

Key words: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse(CLD) students, Reading literacy environment, Underachievement in reading, Elementary students, Case study

References: Cambourne(1995) "Toward An Educationally Relevant Theory Of Literacy Learning: Twenty Years Of Inquiry". The Reading Teacher, Vol. 49, No. 3.
Quiroz, Snow, & Zhao(2010). Vocabulary skills of Spanish–English bilinguals: impact of mother–child language interactions and home language and literacy support. International Journal of Bilingualism, 14(4), 379-399.